This paper examines a new way of looking at nature in Byzantium in the 11th and 12th centuries, and how this may have impacted the conception of the individual. This shift in mentalities is studied by analysing several testimonies from this period, as well as other contemporary elements such as a pronounced taste for gardens and hunting. The study ...
Published in Board Game Studies Journal
Excavations in Israel of Byzantine and early Islamic sites have yielded some interesting gaming boards that are not always understood by the archaeologists who found them. Because they are organised in parallel rows of ‘holes’, most are presented as ‘mancala’ gameboards – which some may be, indeed; however, boards offering three or four rows of squ...
This paper explores the rituals enacted in or connected with two medieval churches, one walrus ivory cross and a central topic of medieval devotion, Christ’s passion. During Easter Week these memorialised the site in Jerusalem dedicated to the burial of Christ, the holiest place in Christendom. It focuses on the physical elements, the spaces, the p...
Based on Genoese notary deeds edited in the 1970s and 1980s by Geo Pistarino, Silvana Raiteri, and Michel Balard, this chapter analyzes the presence of Greek merchants in the medieval Byzantine settlements of the Danube delta, after these settlements came under Genoese rule in the second half of the fourteenth century. The text focuses specifically...
Anikia Juliana, a woman with the title epiphanestate (επιφανιστάτη) or noblissima–meaning most well-known or most noble–and ostensibly the last illustrious member of the Theodosian dynasty, lived in Constantinople in the late fifth and early sixth century AC. She was one of the most aristocratic women in the city at the time, a patrikia or patricia...
The aim of the paper is to reassess urban trajectories in the Mediterranean during the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. This will be done by focusing on the sites of Amorium, Gortyn, Eleutherna, and Comacchio, places which transcend both the terrestrial and maritime, and the political and military frontiers of the Byzantine emp...
The southern thrust of the Rus in the ninth–tenth centuries is to be explained not only by Viking hunger for wealth and glory, but also by the large, rapidly growing market for furs in the Caliphate. In order to reach that market, the Rus had to cross the Khazars’ sphere of influence in the steppes and wooded steppes of the Volga and Don regions. T...
Ce travail vise à analyser la manière dont les seigneurs latins installés dans les territoires byzantins à l’issue de la Quatrième croisade ont adapté leurs manières de gouverner à un nouvel environnement politique et culturel. Il porte sur un groupe de 422 individus, allant des empereurs de Constantinople jusqu’aux modestes chevaliers n’ayant que ...
This article explores how the visual culture of Eastern Europe has been studied and often excluded from the grander narratives of art history and more specialized conversations due to political and cultural limitations, as well as bias in the field. The history and visual culture of Eastern Europe have been shaped by contacts with Byzantium, transf...
Diplomska naloga predstavlja kronološki pregled razvoja in propada štirih izbranih nomadskih ljudstev: Hunov, Avarov, Bolgarov in Madžarov. Opis zgodovine vsakega izmed ljudstev obsega obdobje od prvih znanih virov do posebej izbranega trenutka. Pri zgodovini Hunov in Avarov je to zadnja relevantna omemba ljudstva, pri Bolgarih njihova dokončna izg...
